But for author Nicholas Dawidoff, the book is more about trying to get inside an NFL team to give a look at the places, moments and meetings that aren't often (or, ever) revealed and how a franchise operates. He spoke with NJ.com and provided some insights from inside the tome -- and told us what readers will find out about some current and former Jets players and coaches.

NJ.com: Why focus on writing a book about the NFL?

Nicholas Dawidoff: Football brings so much pleasure to so many Americans. It's the most popular American entertainment right now and yet I don't think I can think of anything that is as public and popular as the NFL and yet is mysterious to the people who enjoy it. And I was really interested in how it worked.

The NFL life is all about process. And that process that takes place at facilities, people can't really see it. That's what I was most interested in -- the way in which incredibly committed people spend their long, long year, days and nights and weekends committed to a cause. And that cause is to try and perfect the art of football. I was just in awe.

My first book ["The Catcher Was a Spy," which covered former MLB player Moe Berg] was about someone who worked as a spy in the CIA. In certain ways, [football] reminded me very much of how American intelligence officers work, which is to say they have their own private community, they're completely immersed in one another. There's a lot of risk and a lot of pressure but also a lot of camaraderie and interesting tensions. To me, it was an exciting subculture.

NJ.com: Why pick the Jets as your subject?

ND: I just happened to hear Rex Ryan on the radio and then I looked forward to hearing him. I thought he was an incredibly funny person. I just loved to listen to the man talk -- it was because of Rex I wanted to do it. I still think he's a great American character. He's a completely unusual person, intelligent, original, complicated and eccentric.

I could tell you having spent all that time there that any one of his assistant coaches would have been the greatest coach by far I ever had. But I would have killed to play for Rex Ryan and I had that feeling a lot. I don't mean to say that he doesn't have his flaws. But I think everybody has their flaws and his flaws only make him more appealing because there's such humanity to him. And that's why he's such a popular coach with his players.

I wrote a profile of Rex for the New York Times Magazine. I spent a lot of time with the coaches and once I did that, many of the people with the Jets were encouraging me to write a book.

NJ.com: When you say Ryan's "flaws" give him humanity, do you mean stories that have emerged such as the details about his married life?

ND: I don't consider that a flaw. I would say to the contrary that somebody who has had a successful 30-year marriage, to me that makes him more of a human being. I think everybody who works for him feels the same way. From within, it's just one more thing they can tease him about. And football life is so much about teasing.

We can see that with the Miami situation right now. Rex is the master of what I'd call "productive teasing." That's how you have to be where you're in offices where everyone's on top of each other 7 days a week, 18 hours a day. One of the things that I would say is one of Rex's great strengths is that he's very inclusive. In the wake of this [Dolphins] situation, that's what really occurred to me. Rex likes the fact that everyone has their own unique skills and how to integrate them all into a football scheme.

Getting back to the flaws: Rex is conflict averse, he really doesn't want to hurt people. Football, to some degree, is a ruthless profession...if you're not willing to be a little bit ruthless at times in terms of personnel. With some of his personnel decisions that year, he left a lot of it to general manager Mike Tannenbaum. It put Tannenabum in a difficult position at times or it put people who worked for him in a difficult position. And it always came from a place of generosity or kindness. In other words, he'd want people who worked for him to be empowered, he wanted them to succeed, room to do what they do.

NJ.com: Did you find what you read during the 2011 season about the Jets was different than what you saw because of your access?

ND: I think it's a very difficult thing for people to cover professional football because [teams] make it difficult. Because access is so limited and the game is removed in many ways, it's difficult for any reporter to spend the kind of in-depth time that might make them completely familiar with the people they're writing about and with the sport.

I hope this doesn't sound patronizing, but I felt sympathy for both sides. I felt sympathy for people covering professional football because it's so removed. And I felt sympathy for the people in professional football. ... I can tell you a lot of the coaches felt it was a presumption for journalists to be judging them so constantly.

NJ.com: What can Jets fans look forward to finding out about the 2011 team?

ND: One of the people that interested me the most was Darrelle Revis. He's the greatest defensive player of his time, in Rex's opinion and my opinion. Antonio Cromartie, like many many football players had a really difficult and complicated childhood that has had repercussions throughout his life. But he's struggled valiantly, even heroically to become a better person. His life is complicated, but I felt that he was both a sympathetic and inspiring person. Football is just a bunch of emotionless tough people -- Cro's full of emotion in a way that for me, he really did feel like Rex. They both felt like literary characters.

One of the things I didn't know about football and found so moving is that a lot of players come from single-parent families and a lot have had difficult childhoods. ... What really drew them to football was the game provided a surrogate family: brothers and uncles. One player said, "Football is my father."

[The book] is going to be two years old in the same way there are books about sports teams that I admire like "Paper Lion" or "Moneyball." You still read those books today with great pleasure because there are vivid, memorable characters and the narrative transcends the moment. So I knew that one of the risks of this was that everybody would change teams and we'd be well on to another season. My ambition was to tell a story about memorable people doing things that were also memorable. ... I'm shocked there's even been a little news coming out of this book.